Single-Metasurface-Enabled Binocular Vision for 4D Imaging

Achieving parallel acquisition of multidimensional optical information for precise environmental sensing constitutes a persistent challenge in imaging system design. Conventional implementations typically necessitate complex optical assemblies, temporal multiplexing strategies, and specialized active illumination sources, imposing fundamental limitations on system miniaturization and practicality. Drawing inspiration from human visual perception, particularly disparity images and optical structures, a metasurface capable of 4D imaging is demonstrated through single-shot acquisition. Leveraging polarization multiplexing principles and the non-diffracting, self-accelerating properties of Airy beams, the metasurface produces spin-decoupled point spread functions (PSFs) exhibiting horizontal displacement correlated with object depth. This configuration enables the generation of disparity-equivalent images in the left- and right-handed circular polarization channels. By combining these with the proposed image restoration and depth retrieval algorithms, 4D imaging encompassing 3D imaging and polarization analysis is achieved. This compact multidimensional imaging platform demonstrates significant potential to advance machine vision and autonomous driving applications while offering foundational insights for further high-performance imaging system development.